Here’s What I Want You To Know…

…About Christmas

(Note to Readers: Possible Santa spoiler alert…)

Songs, poems, and stories have been written about this time of year we call Christmas. I have experienced Christmas through the years of childhood and into adulthood. Every year for all my years there has been a Christmas. I learned all the carols and traditions I was taught in my youth and so repeated them again to my children and grandchildren.

Christmas trees and tinsel, cookies and carols, shopping and sharing, dreaming and desiring, preparations and parties, the giving and the getting are all part of what we call Christmas. It is good times and family and celebration. It’s all a grand holiday season dressed up in glitter and lights.

As a child I was told that on Christmas Eve we opened the presents from Grandmas and Grandpas, but on Christmas morning we would awaken to discover the presents Santa had brought to us from the North Pole. Yeah, I believed that. Until the time my cousins revealed there was no Santa and the presents were from Mom and Dad. I knew they must be wrong, but then they took me up into their attic where their Christmas gifts were “hidden.”

I never considered that Mom and Dad had lied or felt any disappointment that Santa was merely a story grownups told kids for some reason I could not imagine. What set me back on my heels was that my parents loved me so much that they would buy all these gifts for me. It seemed an extraordinary display of sacrifice and devotion. Behind the acts of leaving cookies and milk out for Santa and the hanging of stockings was a greater truth, the love of my parents for their children.

And now I see that principle still holds true for me. Behind all the hoopla of the holiday there stands a greater truth. It’s more than even the love of parents for their own. It is the strong and stubborn love of God. My wonder now is not the wonder of a child on Christmas morning, but the wonder of a sinner saved by grace at the thought of the incarnation.

“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35).

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, sweet Mary, the very power of the Highest will bring to birth the Holy One that had been promised, and He will be the Son of God! Here is the wonder and radiance and awe of Christmas. God would enter humanity because of His great love and become Emmanuel, God with us.

“How can this be…” said Mary and I whisper it as well. It is unexplainable, incredible, and seemingly impossible. But this is an act of love rooted in the God of the impossible.

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior…” (Luke 1:47).

“For He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name” (Luke 1:49).

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

So I want you to have “a merry little Christmas” with your family and enjoy every festivity and tradition that you have held through the years, but remember the greater truth and hold dear the revelation of a God who loves and has given the highest gift possible – Himself. Come, let us adore Him!